About me

The Haunting of Secrets by Shelley R. Pickens

Shelley Pickens is a Spanish teacher by day and a novelist by night. She’s been in love with everything paranormal since she can remember. After years of teaching high school students, she decided to take her firsthand knowledge of young adults and apply it to her passion for creative writing and fantasy.

When not teaching or writing, Shelley likes to spend time with her husband and two beautiful children in Atlanta, Ga.

Her escape from reality is her love of complex thriller and science fiction TV series like Supernatural and Sleepy Hollow. In her spare time she is an avid watcher of little league baseball.

Sixteen-year-old Aimee doesn't like to touch people. One touch and she sees their past. One graze over her skin and she can see all the good and bad deeds a person has ever done. It isn't until a bomb explodes during lunch that she realizes exactly how many dirty secrets the students in her school harbor-or exactly how far one of them would go to keep his secrets safe.

In the aftermath of that fateful day of the bombing Aimee is brushed by a fellow student as they are caught in the mob running for their lives. Images of tortured and murdered young girls rise up to choke her. The problem is, Aimee doesn't know who touched her. Somewhere in this school a fellow student is a killer, and Aimee is the only one that can find him before he murders again.

With the help of her friends Aimee must sift through her stolen memories to determine clues. The quest to find a killer unravels the very fabric of her carefully woven life. He won't stop until he silences her- for only she knows all his secrets.

She will have to summon all of her inner strength to decide what she must do: hunt or be hunted.

Q) What inspired you to write this story? I was driving home on a long trip very caffeinated and the idea for Aimee’s story came to me. There was no specific inspiration, just an idea that flourished into a paranormal mystery outlining Aimee’s journey.

Q) How long did it take you to write?

10 months

Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?

My favorite thing about writing is when my hands hit the keyboard, I never know what’s going to happen. I have a general idea where I want my story to go but the outline usually changes as I’m writing it but it is always better than what I had outlined. I finish a chapter saying to myself “Wow! That’s great!” and it only came to me as I was writing. There’s no better feeling for a write.

Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?

EDITING. I don’t mind changing the story or taking care of my commas or even finding another better way to say something. But there are only so many times I can read my story before it all starts to blend together and I lose what little foresight I had for the end result.

Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?JK Rowlings because she’s my author hero. I would love to see what it’s like to live as a famous author – even if just for one day!

Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it? Mustard. We love to buy it but never seem to use it all before it expires.

Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?Since I began the first book with a bang, I didn’t want to disappoint with the sequel. So the second book starts with a stabbing when a fellow student goes crazy for no apparent reason. Slowly, as the story progresses, everyone around Aimee begins to go mad before slipping into a coma. The next journey is for Aimee to explore her powers to save the ones she loves. Little does she know that an old nemesis has returned to finish what he started in the first book. a Rafflecopter giveaway